Garage gardening

I've seriously scaled back my greenhouse plans. Kylee bought a decent self for the garage for starting plants. I do have a nice vermicomposting system. Right now I'm growing worms and their castings in two tubs but I committed to scale back to one tub soon. I harvested a full bucket of worm castings yesterday. Ok I did have help from my unbelievably loving wife who helped sift through the dirt and put the worms in the new buckets. I really did marry the right woman. Alyson and Camille befriended the 12 year old adoptee, Yuliya, in the neighborhood. She is from the Ukraine and is really a sweet child. We had a really fun time for our anniversary. Thanks again Jensen's for watching the kids for 3 nights :) We love you guys! Here's a picture from the adventure.

From 256 Shades of Grey

Greenhouse gardening

Quick post today...
I went with my dad to the Greenhouse gardening class at Thanksgiving point today. I went last year and had a great time. We planted lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, glacier tomatoes, spinach and swiss chard. I'll post pictures next week when they have sprouted. Did you know most garden veggies like 75 degree soil for germination? So my brain is thinking of ways to make my own greenhouse and make it one that the rabbits can live in so it would have to be heated during the winter and cooled during the summer. I've also been thinking about trying to find someway to get the kids involved in a micro-business. Worms promised to be that business for me as a kid, but they always died. My wife also sold worms from her backyard as a kid. So I've been doing some research and I think I may have struck on a plausible business plan.
Step 1: Clean out the shed, insulate the walls, properly arrange the stuff thats in it to give us one free wall. Install electicity to the shed and hook up an air conditioner/heater unit ( we already have a window unit in the garage).
Step 2: Move the rabbits into the newly thermally controlled shed.
Step 3: Buy/Make a worm bucket farm
Step 4: Buy red wigglers and start the worm farm
Step 5: Start seeds in the shed, grow them in garden.
Step 6: Sell worms to pay the electricty bill for the shed/greenhouse combo

It is pure genius I tell ya... The rabbit pellets and garden waste feed the worms. The worm sales pay for the electricity in the shed/greenhouse. And I get all the 'free' plants I want from my shed/greenhouse. This should be a self-sustaining system and that makes me happy!

Labor Day Love follow up

Sorry to keep you waiting for the rest of the Labor day story. I'm afraid the writers guild went on strike...

... The next day we decided to head over to Yellowstone National Park. Old Faithful made us wait quite a long time but finally it did its thing. We drove around and took some nice photos.

After our long day at Yellowstone, I wasn't too excited to drive back to Star Valley. Kylee wondered if there was a room available at the old faithful lodge. I figured there was no way we'd get a room at the last minute on Labor Day so I encouraged her to ask. Well, the guy must've thought we looked particularly desperate for a room so he said, "Well, there is this one room that we don't usually rent out. It is right above the boiler room and quite often there is alot of noise and vibration from the boiler but I guess I'll show it to you if you want and give you 1/2 off." Huh? 1/2 off? I'll take it... Oh well, I guess we should look at it first. Yep, we took it. We didn't experience any noise or vibration issues but dang-gum that room has HOT. Holy mackeral that room must have been 85 degrees. We opened a window and figured it would air out. Pfft.. I might as well have been trying to air out Hades. After about an hour we drenched every towel we could find in the room plus a couple the front desk brought up and slept under wet towels. Every couple of hours I had to wake up and re-wet the towels. Finally, the morning came and we bailed out. The weather outside was very nice, a little drizzly but cool and crisp, the kind of weather that makes you want to go running. We piled into the Pilot and headed out for more fun in Yellowstone. We finally saw some bison and elk on Sunday.

The weather turned on us so we headed home in a mild rain. By the time we got back to Star Valley, it was a steady down pour and cold enough to be unpleasant. We dropped into bed and realized the roof above the master bed was leaking. I got up on the roof to see if I could stanch the leak but succeeded only in freezing my hands and slowing it down some. We grabbed pots and pans and towels and spent the night curled around them as best we could. The next morning I bought a big tub to leave under the leak and did my best to cover up the leaking area. We left glad to have gone and glad to get home to our own beds. Would I go back? Absolutely! You can't make memories like that at some snooty 5 star hotel.

I swear the egg nog wasn't spiked

black mail

I think the title of the post says it all :)

Labor day love

So, the summer is over. I mean OVER. I just about had a panic attack that we had not gone camping even once this summer. Kylee suggested I follow up on a conversation with Betty and Larry at the family reunion wherein they suggested we spend a weekend at Star Valley. So, I called them and sure enough it was open for Labor Day. I figured that would be close enough to camping to whet my appetite. Meanwhile this summer, our van had gotten worse and worse and worse. I got an estimate from a repair shop for 750 smackaroos. Hmm... I'll pass on that. We had been looking at vehicles and settled on the Honda Pilot. Autotrader.com found us a dealer that only sells Honda lease returns and is cheaper than any other place I can find a late model Honda. Cheap enough in fact that we could purchase one and still have budget to save for the next car we'll have to buy. So we were really interested in that too. Now, where was I? Oh yes Labor Day... Well, we doubted the van would get us to Star Valley at all so I took Friday off and we went and test drove a 2005 Pilot that had 47k miles and was priced at $12,900. Right on! I tried to talk him down but it was a very clean car with a clean title and was below NADA trade-in. He wouldn't come down in price but added a few upgrades (tow hitch & tranny cooler, roof rack, and DVD system all together for less than $1200) and offered $800 trade-in for the van. Well, that was all she wrote. We bought it. Let see, I was writing about something else... Oh yeah Labor Day... Ok, so they installed the DVD, we picked up the keys and packed up the Pilot and kissed the old van good bye. We were on the road for Star Valley by 5 pm in our handsome new vehicle. Did I mention we totally love that thing? Oh yeah, I can actually pass people that are driving slowly now. Even packed to the brim with stuff and all 6 of us in it, we still got 21.9 MPGs. And, no I wasn't driving slow... We arrived just after Midnight and quickly unpacked the essentials and fell asleep. Little did I know that that would be the only good nights rest I was to get over the weekend....

Its Alive!

I would like to publicly apologize for not helping Dad more with his gardening back in my younger years. However, I have caught the garden-fever. Kylee complains that I'm turning our residence into a farm. I don't know why but something about growing plants speaks to my soul. I wonder if it has something to do with our ancestors being farmers? I'll have to post some pics later on